Hiroyuki Kishi

Daigo, a cellist, is laid off from his orchestra and moves with his wife back to his small hometown where the living is cheaper. Thinking he’s applying for a job at a travel agency he finds he’s being interviewed for work with departures of a more permanent nature – as an undertaker’s assistant.

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

Asami, a junior-college student two months from graduation, lends a red umbrella one day to Mayama, a Psychology instructor. Her artlessly forward approach leaves Mayama embarrassed and confused. She has, in fact, been watching him for some time. Meanwhile Mayama’s girlfriend Izumi, unable to find her own place in his heart, has resolved to leave him. Seeing Mayama in torment, tied to his past, Asami decides to set his heart free. Set in present-day Tokyo, this story of the wandering and revival of souls beset by feelings of loss is brought quietly and gently to the screen by the outstanding talent of Nagasawa Masahiko.

Higashigaoka Junior High School is in turmoil as one of the pupils, Noguchi, who had been bullied, attempted suicide last term. On the first day of the new term, a substitute teacher arrives to take the second year class. When the teacher, Murauchi (Hiroshi Abe), introduces himself, the pupils are surprised by his stutter. He has a speech impediment. Unable to speak eloquently, Murauchi faces his pupils with ‘words of truth’. His first instruction to the pupils is to return Noguchi’s desk and chair to the original place in the classroom. Every morning Murauchi greets the empty desk, “Good morning, Noguchi.” This causes a ripple beyond the classroom and among other teachers and parents, but Murauchi will not stop doing it. Eventually the day comes when Murauchi must leave.

When a major bank is caught paying off a corporate extortionist, the media and prosecutors begin to dig, breaking open a money-and-favours scandal that threatens to rock the entire structure of business and government to its core. While the bank's top executives continue to vacillate, a quartet of middle-management reformers, led by straight-arrow Kitano (Koji Yakusho), decide to stage a boardroom coup and install a new, clean management team. With the aid of a hotshot news anchor (Mayumi Wakamura) and a hard-nosed prosecutor (Kenichi Endo), heads begin to roll.

A single woman who works in a car dealership suffers from a past trauma and has a fear of men. But she gets deviant satisfaction at a women’s clinic where the doctor secretly films his examinations of her. One night at a laundromat she assaulted by a man from behind. This triggers a strange desire within her and she returns to the laundromat in search of more dangerous pleasures.

Kosuge, the president of a factory, is killed by someone while returning home. A bag charm is found at the scene. When Akira Higuchi and his colleagues from the Metropolitan Police Department's Investigation Division investigate his home, they find a bankbook with the letters A, Y, M, and S written in English. It turns out that the charms left behind were custom-made by Seiji Iwai. However, Seiji had committed suicide five years ago in a robbery-suicide case. Seiji's mother, Mizuki, is an old acquaintance of Superintendent Tendo. Higuchi heads for Mizuki's place...

A young girl named Mitsuki receives a ticket for a bus tour from her uncle. The tour appears to be normal (expect that everyone appears to be quite sombre), but Mitsuki learns its true purpose: the other passengers and the tour manager have a suicide pact to send the bus over a cliff so their families can collect the insurance money.

1990 Original Video.